Spotlight on the Arts

The University of Georgia spotlights its arts programs and venues during an annual nine-day festival that includes concerts, theater and dance performances, art exhibitions, poetry readings, film festivals, discussions on the arts and creativity, and more.

2017

The 2017 Spotlight on the Arts festival will be held November 2-12th.

Willson Center / Waffle House Tailgate with Stewart and Winfield

November 4, Willson Center for Humanities and Arts

Tailgate party before the UGA-South Carolina football game with complimentary food from Waffle House and music by UGA alumni Winfield Smith (class of ’93, English), Stewart Marshall (class of ‘91, English) and other special guests. The party begins three hours before kickoff, time TBD.

Screening: “Dr. Strangelove” with Panel Discussion

November 8, 7:00pm, Ciné – 234 W Hancock Ave, Athens, GA 30601

The Willson Center and the School of Public and International Affairs present a screening of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 Cold War satire Dr Strangelove. Sara Kutchesfahani, senior policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Jeffrey Jones, executive director of the Peabody Awards, and Matthew Auer, Dean of the School of Public and International Affairs, will take part in a post-film discussion on nuclear proliferation and public discourses on nuclear war. Chris Sieving, associate professor of theatre and film studies, will introduce the film.

Screening and Discussion – “Dawson City: Frozen Time”

November 9, 7:30pm, Ciné – 234 W Hancock Ave, Athens, GA 30601

Dawson City: Frozen Time, a meditation on cinema’s past from Decasia director Bill Morrison, pieces together the bizarre true history of a long-lost collection of 533 nitrate film prints from the early 1900s. Located just south of the Arctic Circle, Dawson City was settled in 1896 and became the center of the Canadian Gold Rush that brought 100,000 prospectors to the area. It was also the final stop for a distribution chain that sent prints and newsreels to the Yukon. The films were seldom, if ever, returned. The now-famous Dawson City Collection was uncovered in 1978 when a bulldozer working its way through a parking lot dug up a horde of film cans. Morrison draws on these permafrost-protected, rare silent films and newsreels, pairing them with archival footage, interviews, historical photographs, and an enigmatic score by Sigur Rós collaborator and composer Alex Somers. Dawson City: Frozen Time depicts the unique history of this Canadian Gold Rush town by chronicling the life cycle of a singular film collection through its exile, burial, rediscovery, and salvation.

The film will be presented with an introduction by Margaret Compton, media archives archivist in the Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection. The event, sponsored by the Film Studies Program in the department of theatre and film studies, the UGA Libraries, and the Willson Center, is free and open to the public.

Reception for “In The Shadow Of The Sea,” Photographs by Sean Dunn

November 10, 6:00pm, Ciné – 234 W Hancock Ave, Athens, GA 30601

Reception for local photographer and musician Sean Dunn, whose two exhibits – at the Willson Center, Nov. 1 through Dec. 20 and Ciné Nov. 10 through Dec. 1 – are culled from photographs taken in Cuba in 2016.

Book launch for “Athens Potluck” by Jason Thrasher

November 12, 1:00pm, Nuçi’s Space – 396 Oconee St, Athens, GA 30601

Reception for local photographer and community supporter Jason Thrasher to celebrate the publication of Athens Potluck, his first photography book documenting the Athens music scene. Featuring readings by musicians featured in the book.

Athens Potluck is a “stream of consciousness” journey through the wildly diverse music scene of Athens, Georgia. Thrasher chose the first of 33 musicians to be photographed at home, with each subsequent artist choosing the next, creating a rare glimpse into the interconnected and often private lives of Athens musicians.

2016

The 2016 Spotlight on the Arts festival will be held November 1-12th.

Kimiko Hahn – Poetry Reading

November 1, 2:00pm, Georgia Museum of Art

Kimiko Hahn, the author of eight collections of poetry, will read from her most recent collection, “Toxic Flower” (W.W. Norton, 2010), illustrating connections between scientific study and poetry. The Southeast Consul General of Japan will provide introductory remarks on “Tradition and Poetry in Japan: Tanka and the Imperial Family.” The reading concludes the NEA Big-Read “Poe-Tober” in Athens.

This event is co-sponsored by the Georgia Museum of Art, the departments of genetics and plant biology, Athletic Association Professor Julie Luft, the Center for Asian Studies, the Japanese Consulate in Atlanta, and the Willson Center, in partnership with Dr. Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor of Language and Literacy Education and “Poe-Tober” in Athens.

Jacknife Lee – Public Conversation with David Barbe

November 3, 4:00pm, UGA Chapel

The internationally renowned music producer (R.E.M., U2, Taylor Swift, Snow Patrol, Weezer) is the inaugural Willson Center / Terry College Music Business Program Visiting Fellow. He will take part in classes and a recording studio session with students, have a public conversation with MBUS Director David Barbe, and perform a DJ set at the 40 Watt Club in downtown Athens on November 4th at 9:00pm.

Fortunato Ensemble

November 3, 6:00pm, Ramsey Concert Hall

D’Anna Fortunato, mezzo-soprano; Peter H. Bloom, multiple flutes; and Mary Jane Rupert, piano, have concertized together for more than 20 years and have toured as a vocal chamber ensemble across the United States. The Fortunato Ensemble will make its debut at the UGA Hugh Hodgson School of Music with a Gala Vocal Chamber Concert, featuring the premiere of a new work written for the occasion by UGA Professor Adrian P. Childs. Other selections will include duets by J.S. Bach and Felix Mendelssohn (with UGA Professor Stephanie Tingler, soprano, joining the ensemble), and music by Mozart, Schubert, and Elizabeth Vercoe.

Emily Greenwood – “The School of Athens, now: Democracy, Rhetoric, and the Fractured Citizen Body, from Classical Athens to the present”

November 4, 3:30pm, Dean Rusk Hall, Larry Walker Room, 4th floor

Emily Greenwood is currently a Classics scholar at Yale, after receiving her BA, MPhil and PhD from Cambridge University. Her career began as a research fellow at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and continued with her position at the University of St. Andrews as a lecturer in Greek. Her research interests include ancient Greek historiography, Greek prose literature of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE and the theory and practice of translating the ‘classics’ of Greek and Roman literature. Dr. Greenwood has received numerous accolades, including the Runciman Award in 2011, in addition to being an author, editor and contributor to over 40 publications.

David Haughey – Lecture

November 7, 3:00pm, Lyndon House Arts Center

David Haughey is an artist living in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is currently creating a body of work for solo exhibition at The Belfast School of Art, opening January 2017. He has shown work in conjunction with The Metropolitan Arts Centre, Belfast, in Venice, at La Casa Di Corto Maltese, as well as the Royal Ulster Academy Annual exhibition, and at Void Gallery, Derry, in an exhibition curated by Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger. His work has been shown at numerous other group and solo exhibitions.

Barry McGovern – “Reading from Samuel Beckett’s Letters”

November 7, 7:30pm, CINÉ

Barry McGovern (born 1948) is an Irish stage, film and television actor, and will be giving an in-depth reading of the letters of Samuel Beckett. McGovern is a former member of the RTÉ Players and the Abbey Theatre Company. He has worked in theatre, film, radio and television, as well as written music for many shows, and co-written two musicals and directed plays and operas. He is known internationally for his award-winning one-man Beckett shows I’ll Go On and Watt, which the Gate Theatre presented at the 1985 and 2010 Dublin Theatre Festival, respectively. McGovern revived I’ll Go On for a run at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, CA for the Center Theatre Group in 2014.

November 9, 1:30pm, Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries

Tom Magill is an ex-prisoner who transformed his life through arts education while in prison for violence. While incarcerated he met his enemy, an IRA Volunteer —and his enemy became his teacher. In 2007 he directed Mickey B, an award-winning feature film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, cast with prisoners from Maghaberry maximum-security prison in Northern Ireland.

The lecture is part of 1616 / 1916 / 2016: Shakespeare in Ireland, a symposium celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death and 100 years since the Easter Rising, sponsored by the department of English, the department of theatre and film studies, the department of comparative literature, the Willson Center, the Graduate School, and the Richard B. Russell Special Collections Libraries

November 9, 2:45pm, Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries

Students of Fran Teague, University Professor of the Arts in the departments of English and theatre and film studies, will perform a staged reading of “Spreading the News” and “The Rising of the Moon” by Lady Augusta Gregory. Gregory was an early 20th century Irish playwright, a central figure in the Irish Literary Revival that also included Wiliam Butler Yeats. The student performers are from Teague’s class “How To Read A Play.”

The reading is part of 1616 / 1916 / 2016: Shakespeare in Ireland, a symposium celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death and 100 years since the Easter Rising, sponsored by the department of English, the department of theatre and film studies, the department of comparative literature, the Willson Center, the Graduate School, and the Richard B. Russell Special Collections Libraries.

November 9, 4:00pm, Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries

Nicholas Grene is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Trinity College Dublin, where he taught for 36 years.

His talk, “Irish Shakespeares: 1916 to 2016,” recounts the uneasy history of Irish Shakespeares from 1916 to 2016. In April 1916 the British Empire Shakespeare Society staged Hamlet as part of the Shakespeare Tercentenary celebrations. In the period since 1922, Shakespeare, the canonical writer of the former colonial power, has been an uneasy presence in Irish theatre. For many years, Anew McMaster continued the tradition of touring the plays round Ireland, initially with those pretend Irishmen Hilton Edwards and Micheal Mac Liammóir in his company. An adventurously modernist King Lear was staged at the Abbey in 1928, directed by the playwright Denis Johnston. There have been some successful productions of the comedies with a specifically Irish dimension, such as the 1990s musical Comedy of Errors, or the 2006 Taming of the Shrew given a contemporary Irish setting. But many Irish productions have struggled to find an appropriate idiom for Shakespeare. Nicholas Grene’s paper will explore a range of Irish stagings of the plays down to the award-winning DruidShakespeare of 2015 and the Abbey’s 2016 production of Othello.

Kim Mawhinney – “Art Can Tread Where Words and Politics Often Can’t’: Curating the Troubles Legacy”

Kim Mawhinney, Head of Art, Ulster Museum, Belfast, examines the challenges and consequences of using art to engage the public with the legacy of Northern Ireland’s recent past. Art of the Troubles, 2014, and Colin Davidson: Silent Testimony, 2015, were two landmark exhibitions demonstrating the Ulster Museum’s ongoing commitment to helping the public explore, understand and respond to the 30-year period of Northern Ireland’s history known as the Troubles.

The Birth of a Nation is a provocative new movie on every level. Nate Parker writes, directs, and produces the film, in addition to starring as Nat Turner. His movie won both the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and its Audience Award. The movie has been celebrated for its powerful treatment of religion and slavery, though concerns over Parker’s own personal history accumulated as the movie approached its national release. As Variety’s review states: “The Birth of a Nation will provoke a serious debate about empathy, the morality of retaliatory violence, and the ongoing black struggle for justice and equality in this country.” This panel will address the themes, style, and reception of Parker’s adaptation of Nat Turner’s story

The Willson Center Cinema Roundtable panel includes Valerie Babb (Institute for African American Studies and English), Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin (African American Studies and Theatre and Film Studies), Ed Pavlic (English and Creative Writing), and Christopher Sieving (Theatre and Film Studies). Richard Neupert (Coordinator, Film Studies) hosts the roundtable. The roundtable is free and open to the public, which will be invited to join the discussion.

Willson Center – Waffle House Tailgate

November 12, 3 Hours prior to UGA/AU game, Willson Center

Tailgate at the Willson Center three hours before the football game vs. Auburn with catering courtesy of Waffle House.

Music by UGA Alumni band Winfield Smith of Stewart and Winfield (English, UGA ’93), Ansley Stewart of the Terry College Music Business Program (M.A., Journalism, UGA ’15), and Scotty Nicholson (Music Composition, UGA ’97).

2015

The 2015 Spotlight on the Arts festival was held November 6-15th.

Abderrahmane Sissako at France-Atlanta

November 6, 7:00pm – November 7, 7:00pm, various locations in Atlanta, GA

The internationally acclaimed filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako will visit Atlanta for two days of events including film screenings, student workshops, and an audience forum as part of France-Atlanta, a two-week series of events designed to foster cooperation between France and the U.S. Southeast in the scientific, business, cultural, and humanitarian domains. It is presented under the high auspices of the Ambassador of France to the United States, the Governor of Georgia, and the Mayor of Atlanta, with the support of all of the French and French-American associations in Atlanta.

Willson Center – Waffle House Tailgate

November 7, 9:30 am, Willson Center

Tailgate at the Willson Center before the football game vs. Kentucky with catering courtesy of Waffle House. Music by Winfield Smith of Stewart and Winfield (English, Class of ’93), Ansley Stewart of the Terry College Music Business Program (M.A., Journalism, UGA ’15), and Scotty Nicholson (Music Composition, UGA ’97).

Screening – “Vertigo”

November 9, 7:30pm, Cine

The Willson Center presents a special screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece Vertigo with an introduction by Philip McGowan of Queens University Belfast. The film, starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, was voted #1 on the British magazine Sight and Sound‘s 2012 decennial list of the greatest films of all time. Philip McGowan teaches American Literature at Queen’s University Belfast, with interests in twentieth-century poetry, contemporary fiction, as well as in film, most recently the American movies of Alfred Hitchcock. He also has wider interests in Puritan and revolutionary America, the American nineteenth century, westerns, and crime fiction and how these connect with contemporary manifestations of American identity.

Screening – “Salt of the Earth”

November 10, 7:30pm, Cine

The Salt of the Earth, directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, is a 2014 French-Brazilian biographical documentary about the Brazilian photographer and conservationist Sebastião Salgado. The film won the Special Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary at the 87th Academy Awards. It won the 2014 Audience Award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival, the 2015 Audience Award at the Tromsø International Film Festival, and the César Award for Best Documentary Film at the 40th César Awards. A public reception with catering from The National will begin at 6:30 p.m.

Screening – “Raise the Roof”

November 11, 6:00pm and 8:30pm, Cine

Raise the Roof is a 2014 documentary film that follows artists Rick and Laura Brown to Sanok, Poland, as they begin rebuilding Gwoździec, a magnificent eighteenth-century wooden synagogue that was destroyed by the Nazis. Their vision inspires hundreds of people to join them, using their hands, old tools and techniques to bring Gwoździec’s history, culture, science, and art back to life. Rick and Laura Brown will be present to introduce the film and answer questions from the audience. A public reception will include refreshments from The National. The evening’s events are presented in partnership with the Athens Jewish Film Festival. Note: There will be two screenings of the film, at 6 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. The reception will begin at 7:30 p.m.

Conference: “Appropriation in an Age of Global Shakespeare”

November 12 – 14, UGA

“Appropriation in an Age of Global Shakespeare” is an international Shakespeare conference sponsored by the University Libraries, the Department of English, the Department of Theatre and Film Studies, the Office of Academic Programs and the Office of the Provost, the University of Georgia Symposium on the Book, and the Willson Center. The conference marks the tenth anniversary ofBorrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation. Founded and co-edited by Christy Desmet and Sujata Iyengar, the journal is internationally recognized as the leading venue for publications on the topic of Shakespearean Appropriation: prequels, sequels, recyclings, and rewritings of all kinds from across the globe. The conference also marks the emergence of a new Shakespeare, one for our global digital age, in anticipation of the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death in 2016. Full conference details are available here.

2014

David Daley, editor-in-chief of Salon.com, will visit the University of Georgia for the second time as the inaugural Willson Center – Grady College Digital Media Fellow. His visit is co-sponsored by the Willson Center and the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. Daley was culture editor and executive editor of Salon, an online journal of news, politics, culture, technology and entertainment, before being named editor-in-chief in 2013. He is the former features editor of Details magazine, and the former lifestyles manager of the Louisville Courier-Journal. He is also editor of the online literary journal FiveChapters.

Spotlight • Slingshot

November 8, 4 pm – 9 pm, College Square, downtown Athens

The Willson Center and the Music Business Program of the Terry College of Business present a special Spotlight on the Arts installment of the Slingshot festival of music, electronic art, and technology. Spotlight • Slingshot is a free public concert on College Square in downtown Athens featuring five acclaimed local and national acts, many including UGA graduates and attendees.

Nels Pearson – “Beckett’s Crossing”

November 10, 3 pm, Miller Learning Center, room 148

Dr. Pearson of Fairfield University specializes in Twentieth-Century British Literature, Literacy Modernism, and Irish Literature with a focus on modernism in its historical and political contexts, especially Irish and British modernism as they relate to imperialism, nationalism and national identity, and debates surrounding the concept of cosmopolitanism. His articles have appeared in ELH, Modern Fiction Studies, Twentieth Century Literature, Irish University Review, Conradiana, European Joyce Studies, Studies in Scottish Literature, and The Victorian Newsletter. He is the co-editor of Detective Fiction in a Postcolonial and Transnational World (Ashgate, 2009), and he is completing a book entitled Irish Cosmopolitanism: Location and Dislocation in James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen and Samuel Beckett.

Barry McGovern – Performances from Samuel Beckett

November 10, 8 pm, Ciné

Barry McGovern (born 1948) is an Irish stage, film and television actor. He will give a performance of the poetry and prose of Samuel Beckett in a special appearance sponsored by the Consulate General of Ireland in Atlanta. McGovern is a former member of the RTÉ Players and the Abbey Theatre Company. He has worked in theatre, film, radio and television, as well as written music for many shows, and co-written two musicals and directed plays and operas. He is known internationally for his award-winning one-man Beckett showsI’ll Go On and Watt, which the Gate Theatre presented at the 1985 and 2010 Dublin Theatre Festival, respectively. McGovern revived I’ll Go On for a run at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, CA for the Center Theatre Group in 2014.

Been in the Storm So Long: Remembering 1864 and 1964 in 2014

Georgia Public Broadcasting’s Rickey Bevington hosts a stellar line-up of local scholars, poets, artists, and musicians in a far-reaching roundtable discussion of the coincident anniversaries of the 1864 Battles of Atlanta and 1964 Civil Rights Act. Panelists include U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey; artist Robert Morris; singer-songwriter Caroline Herring; and historians Robert Pratt, Brett Gadsden, and Joseph Crespino. Come join this important public forum on how our divisive past can be transformed into collective meaning. Sponsored by the Atlanta History Center, the UGA History Department, the Woodruff Library at Emory University, and the Willson Center.

2013

Virginia Mary Macagnoni Willson Center Fellows Symposium

Willson Center Faculty Research Fellowship recipients participate in one of two Virginia Mary Macagnoni Fellows Symposia on campus during the academic year. The Fall 2013 Symposium includes six Willson Center Fellows whose research is connected to the fine arts, and is presented in conjunction with the University of Georgia’s 2013 Spotlight on the Arts festival.

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The participants and the titles of their research projects are:

Rachel Gabara, Associate Professor of Romance Languages: Reclaiming Realism: From Documentary Film in Africa to African Documentary Film

The Virginia Mary Macagnoni Prize for Innovative Research was established by Dr. Virginia Macagnoni, Professor Emeritus in the College of Education, to be awarded annually to the top-ranked recipient of the Willson Center Research Fellowship. The Macagnoni Prize provides a $2,000 stipend to enable scholars and artists to expand their understanding of the world through travel, attendance at conferences, purchase of vital tools or archival materials, and use of other resources relevant to their work. In 1967 Macagnoni became the first woman to join the faculty of the University of Georgia College of Education.
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Art Opening – “Seen/Unseen”

November 9, 6pm., ATHICA, 160 Tracy St., Athens, 30601

The Georgia Virtual History Project and Athens Institute for Contemporary Art (ATHICA) will present “Seen/Unseen,” a two-week exhibition dedicated to public history and the local past of Athens, Georgia. Co-curated by Hope Hilton of ATHICA and Christopher Lawton, executive director of GVHP and a history instructor at UGA, the show will include digital media projects by UGA and Athens Academy history students. The opening reception on November 9 will be part of the Willson Center’s programming for the university’s 2013 Spotlight on the Arts festival.

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“Seen/Unseen” is designed to be a groundbreaking gallery experience that explores the intersections of art, history, performance and technology to connect Athens’ past with its present. The exhibition, according to Lawton, “will challenge what time has made invisible and reclaim historical, geographical, and intellectual spaces for long-forgotten people, stories, and events.

“This collaboration presents a unique opportunity to both reshape the way we talk about local history and unveil a radically new technological and educational model,” Lawton said. “More importantly, inclusion in this exhibition will provide UGA and Athens Academy students with an unprecedented experience that can significantly help propel them into future academic and professional endeavors.”

The GVHP is an effort to use new and interactive technologies to record the history of the state of Georgia and make it available to multiple audiences, from eighth-graders and the general public to college students and academic professionals. It is aligned with the eHistory project of the UGA Digital Humanities Lab, a Willson Center Faculty Research Cluster.

“Bayou Maharajah” – Documentary

November 11, Ciné, 234 West Hancock Avenue, Athens, 30601

Bayou Maharajah explores the life and music of New Orleans piano legend James Booker, the man Dr. John described as “the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced.” A brilliant pianist, his eccentricities and showmanship belied a life of struggle, prejudice, and isolation. Illustrated with never-before-seen concert footage, rare personal photos and exclusive interviews, the film paints a portrait of this overlooked genius.

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The Athens premiere of Bayou Maharajah will take place on November 11 at Ciné as part of UGA’s Spotlight on the Arts festival. The documentary was directed by UGA alum Lily Keber and produced by Nate Kohn, professor of telecommunication arts in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and associate director of the Peabody Awards. Both will attend the premiere to introduce the film and participate in an audience Q&A session after the screening.

Hank Lazer and Andrew Raffo Dewar – Poetry/Music Duo

November 11, 6pm., Hugh Hodgson School of Music, Dancz Hall, Room 264

Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE) will host Hank Lazer, Andrew Raffo Dewar, and representatives of Creative Campus, a student-centered arts advocacy organization at the University of Alabama, for two days of performance and conversation about the role of the arts in a research university. The duo will give a performance of music and poetry at 6 pm Monday, Nov. 11 in Dancz Hall, Hodgson School of Music, Room 264, and take part in the ICE Conversation Series at 9:30 am Tuesday, Nov. 12 in the ICE Office, Lamar Dodd School of Art, Room S160. Both events are associated with the 2013 UGA Spotlight on the Arts festival.

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Hank Lazer and Andrew Raffo Dewar have been exploring the improvisational performance of poetry and jazz, working mostly with texts from Lazer’s handwritten Notebooks project. At times, the performances involve music that supports, illustrates, or reiterates elements of the written and spoken text. At other times, the balance shifts in the direction of the text as a mere suggestion and the music becomes the dominant element of the new composition that results from the interaction of words and music.

Lazer is Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and Professor of English at the University of Alabama, where he is Executive Director for Creative Campus and edits the Modern and Contemporary Poetics Series for the University of Alabama Press. Over the past fifteen years, Lazer has collaborated with various jazz musicians, filmmakers, choreographers, and visual artists in seeking new ways to present poetry. Lazer’s seventeenth book of poetry N18 (Complete), a handwritten book, is available from Singing Horse Press.

Andrew Raffo Dewar (b.1975 Rosario, Argentina) is a composer, improviser, soprano saxophonist and ethnomusicologist. Since 1995 he has been active in the music communities of Minneapolis, New Orleans, the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, performing his work internationally. Dewar had the good fortune to study with a number of masters of contemporary music, such as Steve Lacy, Anthony Braxton, Alvin Lucier, Bill Dixon, and has also had a long involvement with experimental and traditional Indonesian music. Dewar is Assistant Professor in New College and the School of Music at the University of Alabama.

A student-centered arts advocacy organization, Creative Campus is dedicated to building relationships that will serve as a voice for the cultural arts. The interns at Creative Campus—48 students with various majors and personal backgrounds—work with students, faculty, and community members in order to engage the University of Alabama and Tuscaloosa with innovative ideas. Over the past few years, projects and events have included a student art publication, an interdisciplinary speaker series, an experimental jazz concert series, a student film festival, and the Druid City Arts Festival. By developing collaborative relationships with a wide range of community partners, interns not only learn how to work as a team but also build skills in ideation, organization, design, collaboration, marketing and media production which cultivates a skill set and sense of professionalism that translates into any field of work.

Karima Bennoune’s new book, Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here, was released by W.W. Norton & Company in August 2013. The book addresses resistance to fundamentalism in Muslim majority contexts. The field research for this book took her to many countries, including Afghanistan, Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Mali, Niger and Russia.

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Bennoune’s publications have appeared in many leading academic journals, including the American Journal of International Law, the Berkeley Journal of International Law, the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, the European Journal of International Law, and the Michigan Journal of International Law. They have been widely cited, including on Slate, in the Nation magazine, the Dallas Morning News, and the Christian Science Monitor, as well as by the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and the UN Special Rapporteur on protecting human rights while countering terrorism. Her article, “Terror/Torture,” was designated one of the top 10 global security law review articles of 2008 by Oxford University Press.

She has lectured around the world, including at Harvard Law School, NYU School of Law, UC-Berkeley School of Law, the University of Virginia School of Law and the Yale Law School in the U.S., as well as for the UN Department of Political Affairs, the University of London, the London School of Economics, the University of Oslo, the Feminist Leadership Institute in Senegal, CODESRIA (The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa) and the Second Istanbul Conference on Democracy and Global Security. Making frequent media appearances, Bennoune has spoken on Fox TV, National Public Radio, Pacifica Radio, the Australian Broadcasting Service, CBC-Radio, HuffPost Live, and “The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour,” and has been interviewed by the International Herald Tribune and the Guardian.

This event is co-sponsored by the Willson Center, the University of Georgia School of Law, the Dean Rusk Center for International Law and Policy, the African Studies Institute, and the Georgia Society of International Law.

A special Spotlight on the Arts festival presentation in the Willson Center’s Global Georgia Initiative.

Everyday People: The Film, Television, and Video Work of Jim McKay

The Willson Center, in partnership with Whatever It Takes Athens, will present a four-day festival dedicated to the films, television work, and music videos of Jim McKay, a director, writer, and producer who lived and worked in Athens during the late 1980s and early 1990s. C-Hundred Film Corp., the production company that McKay formed with R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe during that time, remains an active partnership to this day.

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McKay met R.E.M. when they opened for Gang of Four in New York City in June of 1981, then returned to his Boston College radio station, WZBC, in September with the 7″ “Radio Free Europe” single in-hand. He and the band stayed in touch and six years later, McKay moved to Athens at Stipe’s urging, with the promise of “plenty of good restaurant jobs” to be had. Sure enough, soon he was washing dishes at the Bluebird Cafe.

McKay was already at work on his first film/video project, a documentary called Lighthearted Nation. He and Stipe, who himself was diving into numerous film projects related to or independent of R.E.M., formed C-Hundred, which was housed at Prince Avenue and North Newton Street. Together, along with cohort Tom Gilroy, they started the Direct Effect PSA project and produced music videos for local bands like Pylon and Chickasaw Mudd Puppies, as well as R.E.M., and distributed short film collections by Jem Cohen and James Herbert. In 1989, McKay and Stipe collaborated on Tourfilm, a feature-length concert film documenting R.E.M.’s world tour for the album Green.

McKay served on the board of Community Connection and was also involved in historic preservation issues during his time in Athens. He lived in Athens from 1987-1989 and 1991-1993, at which time he moved to New York City to begin work on his first feature film, Girls Town, which was shot in 1995. Girls Town received the Filmmakers Trophy and a Special Jury Prize for Collaboration at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival.

McKay’s second feature as a director was Our Song (1999), which premiered at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, played at the New Directors/New Films festival the same year, and was distributed theatrically in the U.S. by IFC Films. His third feature, Everyday People (2004), was selected as the Opening Night Film of New Directors/New Films 2004 and played at festivals around the U.S. before being broadcast on HBO. His fourth feature, Angel Rodriguez, co-written with Hannah Weyer, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September, 2005, had its U.S. premiere at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and was broadcast on HBO in Fall, 2006.

McKay and special guests, including David Daley, editor-in-chief of Salon.com, will introduce screenings and participate in post-film Q&A sessions, as well as in a panel discussion on the UGA campus.

All proceeds from the festival will go to Whatever It Takes, a nonprofit initiative whose mission is to fight poverty in Athens through support for public education and families. Tickets for screenings and events at Ciné will be available through www.athenscine.com. More information on tickets to all events will be available soon. The November 18 1:25 pm panel discussion is free and open to the public.